Men have been urged to uphold the culture of being providers of families, including shelter, instead of mainly relying on women for their needs.

Nowadays, men are said to have developed a tendency to move into women-owned houses, which should be the opposite. They will later become reluctant to move out and build their own.

At Oshikuku in the Omusati Region, 219 houses were handed over to their new owners, of which the majority are women. Of these houses, 17 were built through the Build Together programme, 62 by the Shack Dwellers Federation, and 140 were constructed through a public-private partnership between Oshikuku Town Council and Easy United Holdings.

Omusati Governor Erginus Endjala was pleased to witness determined women moving from shacks into decent houses.

"Nobody is proud to see somebody living in a shack. The challenge is now to our male counterparts; male counterparts are nowhere to be seen, but the male counterparts are the ones at a later stage who want to put orders in somebody's home that do not belong to the new home owners. Can you see there is no single man? It is a shame for us."

The Minister of Urban and Rural Development, Erastus Uutoni, says decent housing is a basic human right, but it remains a challenge. He says people have to wait longer to own a house and have security of ownership.

"A big number of our mothers are ready to build their houses; they finished with the services, but it's only women now, my folks. When their house is finished, you (the man) come there in a sitting room, reading a newspaper. 'I want food'. Food from where? You bought a car. You go and park that car at the woman's house, and then you say I am going home. Home where?"

A police constable, Beata Ileka, was all smiles as she moved from an iron sheet structured into a brick house.

"I have been living in a shack for four years there. I decided to have my own house, which I got on Facebook through advertisements, and I followed the procedures to get my own house."

There are still two thousand applicants on the waiting list, both for low-, middle-, and high-income earners.